Ghosts Of
by apartfromcoughdrops
Summary: Christmas with James and Lily and the war, through the years.


She's surprised, to tell the truth, when she walks into the Common Room on Christmas Eve to find James Potter slumped on the squashiest chair nearest the fire, a box of Honeydukes' finest balanced on his stomach and a dark bottle tucked in between his hip and the arm of the chair. The flames reflect in his glasses, so she can't tell whether his eyes are open or closed, but his wand is held slackly enough in his hand that she's fairly sure he's fallen asleep, so she feels safe about moving closer to carry out her original aim for the evening: settle down by the fire with a new book (her Christmas present to herself). Sure enough, as soon as she gets cosy in the chair opposite him, feet tucked up so that she's curled like a comma in towards herself, she hears a light snore and she smiles to herself before cracking her book open and getting stuck in.

It's an hour, maybe two, before she resurfaces and she's not quite sure what pulls her out before she glances up and sees that James is watching her lazily, hair sleep-mussed. He nods at her book.

"What're you reading?"

She tilted the book so that he could see the cover, which bears the image of a swooning damsel in the arms of a dishevelled wizard wearing a rather impressive robe artfully torn to reveal an equally impressive body.

"The Warlock's Wand," he reads. "Classy stuff."

"That's me."

He stretches extravagantly, until his back is practically arched and his head slips down onto the armrest. "Always thought you were the sort to read Muggle books, myself."

"I'm a girl of many tastes."

"I bet you are." He smirks upside down at her. "So what are you doing here, with your trashy romance novel? No Christmas parties to go to?"

"Hey," she protests mildly. "I'll have you know that this is a perfectly intellectual novel. In fact, I've just discovered that our eponymous warlock is secretly the long-lost heir to the throne. What could possibly be classier than that? And for the other thing, I could ask the same of you."

He shrugs. "Didn't feel like getting blackout drunk and taking a nosedive off the Astronomy Tower this year. Last Christmas at Hogwarts and all."

"But you don't normally spend Christmas here, do you?" This is something she's been wondering about ever since she came down to dinner last week, the day that most of the school left for home. "I thought you and Sirius went home?"

His eyebrows shoot up. "I didn't realise you'd noticed, Evans." There is a pause, while she waits for him to answer, and eventually he sighs and acquiesces. "Yeah, this is the first Christmas I've spent away from home. Sirius is pissed about it. He wanted to go back, but he didn't want to leave me here alone."

"Why didn't you go home?"

"Why didn't you?" He catches her eyes and hold them for a long while, smiles slipping away. She looks away first, slightly disconcerted by his too-steady gaze, incongruous with the half-empty bottle beside him.

She thinks about lying, but for some reason, she's always found it rather difficult to lie to James Potter. Sighing, she responds.

"Just - family stuff, mostly. I love my parents, but I'd rather stay here in the peace and quiet than have to endure my brother-in-law's family, even for their sake. Not to mention that every Christmas I've been at home my sister has had something to say about my looks, my brains, my friends, my boyfriends, and particularly my magic, and I just...didn't feel like being the absentee daughter who ruined Christmas again."

There's a long silence, before James exhales loudly, eyebrows raised. She laughs, and not quite jokingly holds out her hand for the bottle, which he givesher. She takes a swig, willing herself not to cough as - bloody hell, Firewhiskey - burns down her throat. Having drunk her fill, she offers it back to him, and he echoes her, sitting up.

"Well - okay, my story's not that - that - " He struggles for a moment before giving up. "Anyway, it's just - my parents are a big deal, right? In purebloood society, whatever that is. And they have this massive party every year at Christmas. Talk of the town, it is, and - well." He shrugs. "I'm me. Sirius is Sirius. And most purebloods tend to be blood supremacist gits. I guess you could say that it's not a good combination. Mum's been worrying for years that we'll ruin our futures. And I don't care about that, really, but if I make a scene with calling them out on their bullshit, then not only am I painted like the villain - you know, the rebellious wayward son, out of control - but so are the things I say. It's not worth much, but I'd rather - like, people are dying. If in any way I can prevent that being, I don't know, maligned I suppose, by not shooting my mouth off this year, then I should, I reckon."

It's funny, really. Logically, she'd known that James Potter isn't the person he was a few years ago. The war made her feelings about him seem rather petty, but she did notice in a sort of subconsciously pleasantly surprised way that he'd changed a fair deal. But it's only now, when she thinks it - that is, the actual words Wow, James Potter has changed - that it feels like a real fact. Three years ago, he'd been - not unconcerned, but certainly not so aware - of the war. Maybe that was partly what fuelled her hatred of him; then, it was gathering steam, headlines in the papers and students being escorted out to be discreetly told of deaths in the family and one by one, Lily's stomach filling with stones, a constant reminder that people wanted - and still want - her and her family dead. And although James' father was an Auror and his mother is stunningly progressive, an advocate of total desegregation between the Wizarding and Muggle worlds, it's a constant reality that he would never understand how it was to wake up in the middle of the night with the paralysing fear that all his family had been killed all because of him, and his - his blitheness, and his pranks, and the constant bullying, as if the world was stable enough that it could handle people being mocked for their appearance and everything else besides, as if Sev's hair was the biggest crisis they had, it all just served to make her bitter. God knows it was hardly helped by what happened with Sev.

But looking back, she sees that she hadn't been quite fair. It's true, yes, but the amount that it fuelled her hatred was irrational and stupid. The war did touch James' life - or rather, James touched the war, grabbed it and refused to let go, with every tirade against the new 'conciliatory' anti-Muggleborn measures and every angry word directed at someone who used that terrible word only serving to make him hold on tighter. And she realises with no real surprise - as if she had stumbled across something she knew was there all along - that somewhere along the way, James Potter made a choice to fight a war that was not his.

And that makes - she didn't quite know what that makes her feel.

"What?" he asks, and to her surprise he looks rather self-conscious under her contemplative gaze. "What is it?"

"Nothing. Just - it's funny, you and me."

"What is?"

"I was pushed into the war and you - you take it on like it's no big deal."

Her astonishment increases when he _blushes_, lightly, and rubs the back of his head, kicking the leg of the coffee table in front of him. "It's not - you'd do the same in my place. No - " he looks almost angry, now " - it's not even like I'm doing anything. This is just - there's no other way. I'm just being. I'm just living my life and that just happens to include the war in this way. I didn't make a choice."

"No," she disagrees. "_I_ didn't make a choice. And don't play yourself down, alright? It's - it's a big deal. We could die. You're taking that on and believe me, I know what it means."

He chuckles. "Never thought I'd see the day when Lily Evans told me to talk myself up. And I know that it's big. I know we could die. But - like, this is the way I see it, right? There's no life without my friends, and my family, and the people - " His gaze skitters away from her and his blush deepens " - the people I love."

Oh, Merlin, she thinks and she feels herself blush as well. He soldiers on determinedly.

"And they're all fighting, and I just think that it would be better to do this, and maybe die but maybe not, rather than run away or turn my back and be alone and know that I'm doing the wrong thing. That's - that's not even a choice."

Silence falls once more as she mulls over his words, and he takes another long swig from the bottle.

"You're a good man, James Potter," she says suddenly, without having made the decision to say it. He looks back at her, surprised. "I really - I mean that. And I reckon that. Maybe we could have a drink in Hogsmeade? Sometime during the holiday? We don't have to talk about the war," she adds in a rush, suddenly stricken by the worry that he might think that's the only thing she can talk about. "We can definitely talk about something else. Like books! Or school. Or - or Quidditch?"

James stares at her, before smiling, slowly. "Are you asking me on a date?"

"Um. Yes. Maybe. Yes. I suppose I am, at that."

He looks at her a moment more before laughing low and shaking his head in disbelief. "You're really something, Evans." Struck mute, she's unsure of what to say, and he rises chocolate and Firewhiskey in hand. "Go on, then. Let's say Boxing Day?"

She can't quite stop herself from smiling, and - what the hell, why does she want to stop herself - so she lets it bloom across her face. "Done."

He ambles over to the staircase, and she almost thinks that was it before he turns and raises the bottle at her, and she sees that his grin is blinding. Her stomach does a little flop, and she raises her book in return, feeling a little silly.

"Night, Lily," he says, soft. "I'm glad of you."

And grammatical liberties aside, the fact that it comes almost apropos of everything they'd been talking of aside, the realisation that James Potter _really fucking likes her_ aside - she blushes deep and recognises the truth of it, that she's glad of him, too.

* * *

When she was little, and her mum and dad used to fight, she was always the child who tried to make them stop. Petunia would run up to her room and start playing music loudly, or play with her dolls, or just sit and stare miserably out of the window, but Lily would always try and reason with them - or if it got really bad, scream uselessly at them to stop.

That's one of her most vivid memories, actually; standing there, feet cold and throat sore, tears streaming unnoticed down her face and that horrible claustrophobic feeling of being trapped, as if her parents were in a whole other dimension and did not even know that their daughter was standing right next to them, just trying to get them to stop fighting, Mummy, please, Daddy stop.

This is the way she feels now, and it's sort of ironic, she thinks, because this...this is a lot more than a silly spat over who was supposed to walk the dog.

Because - okay, this is the situation. They've done three or four Order operations now, nothing fancy, just a few scouting missions, occasionally providing backup in fights, but they have seen their fair share of battle. Of real war, the blood and guts of it. And not that she's squeamish about it, she learned to fight dirty as a skinny redheaded half-Irish tomboy being called names on the playground, but she hardly enjoys it. It's a necessary evil and she does it efficiently and competently just as she does other necessary evils.

James does not feel the same. James, in fact, rushes headlong with unholy glee into battle, stupid reckless friends of his urging him on all the while. This has been the case for years, it's true, but it's one thing James and Sirius picking fights with a few thick-skulled Slytherins and quite another for the pair of them to be facing down Voldemort by tthemselves like it's some sort of bloody game, like they can handle it without getting knocked out and hit by Cruciatus respectively and having to be saved by Lily herself. And she doesn't mind about that, she'd do anything for James and god save her but she'd do rather a lot for Sirius as well. But what it all comes down to is her watching her husband almost die and being absolutely helpless. Just as she is now, at his bedside. And it's altogether an utterly rubbish feeling and she refuses to feel this again for the sake of James' bloody recklessness.

Thus, she is hardly in a good mood when he wakes up.

First she sees his eyes slit open, blood still encrusted around the right and the left looking worryingly hazy. Biting her lip, she debates internally whether to give him his glasses or not before picking them up and placing them - not roughly, but not gently, either - on his nose. Blinking, he looks up at her, before his slightly bloodied lips crease into a smile.

"Hey, there." Looking around, he huffs out a breath. "Am I at St. Mungo's? Must be pretty roughed up. Hell of a fight, wasn't it?"

She snorts derisively and he looks back to her, smile fading. "What?"

"'Hell of a fight'? James, you fought Voldemort! You could have died!"

"Well, yeah." He shrugs, looking bemused. "It's war, innit? We could all die, any moment."

"Yes, well, most of us are at least trying not to. Most of us know better than to rush into battle with the second most powerful wizard of our time with only our unreliable mates to back us up!"

"Is this about Sirius? I knew you didn't like him! He's my best friend, Lily, and I trust him! He's always had my back, and you can't bloody say this was his fault -"

"Well it's not like he does wonders for your sense of self-preservation -"

"I'm not done! This -" he points to his eye "- was not Sirius. This was Voldemort. You can't expect me to walk out hale and healthy every time, and you certainly can't expect me to sit at home and twiddle my thumbs while people die! And you're telling me not to be reckless, you volunteered both of us for the Order! This war is your life, Lily! When was the last time we went out for a night? We spend all our time doing bloody paperwork, which I'm awful at, the only time I feel useful is in battle!"

"That's not fair, James, you know that all the scouting and research work is important. You know how important this whole thing is to isn't even about that. This is about the stupid, stupid risks you take that leave me keeping vigil at your bedside. I can't do that again, James. I'd do anything for you, but please do not make me watch you fall to the ground and wonder if you are dead when you can just wait for five minutes for backup. For me. I just. Can't."

His face softens, just barely visibly. "Oh, Lily..."

"Don't you Oh Lily me. Promise me - it can be your resolution for New Year's, look - that you won't do anything stupid like that again, James. Promise."

"All right. I'll try, okay? But you have to promise, too. Promise we'll get a drink sometime, or something. Come on, Lily, we're not even twenty! Let's actually do something normal for our age! Then it won't feel so much like the war is eating our lives." He grins at her and reluctantly, she smiles back

"Alright. It's a date."

So it goes.

* * *

Supposedly for morale, all non-essential Ministry workers have been given a whole week off for Christmas. James thinks it's a fucking stupid idea, to be honest - what a perfect opportunity for the Death Eaters to attack - but it lets him do some stuff for the Order and spend time with Lily, so he's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

But of course, everything goes to pot.

The third morning in a row that James wakes up to a cooling patch of bed next to him and the faint sound of retching, he does not rush to the bathroom. He just stares at the ceiling for a moment, absentmindedly noting for the hundredth time the spider's web of cracks in the plaster and just as distractedly making a hundredth mental note to fix it, before swinging his legs out of bed, wincing as his feet land on the early-morning freeze of the stone floor. He picks up his wand out of pure habit as he makes his way to the bathroom, and shoves it roughly into the waistband of his pyjama trousers before opening the door, leaning tiredly against the jamb.

His wife is curled around the toilet, looking miserable, and he knows that - just like yesterday, and the day before - her stomach is rolling with nothing in it to throw up. She's breathing harshly, and her hair is falling tangled around her face. She does not look at him.

"What are we going to do?" he asks, and his voice comes out sleep-rough.

Outside the birds sing piercingly.

He waits for what seems an eternity, before exhaling and walking in, crouching down and gently brushing the hair from her face.

"Come on," he murmurs, and helps her up, putting an arm around her waist and guiding her towards the kitchen, where he deposits her at the dining table before setting about making her some toast and a weak cup of tea.

Her voice is muffled when she speaks, as her face is pillowed on her arms. "It's only 98% effective. The Contraceptive Charm."

"Yeah."

"This isn't our fault." She raises her head, and he's unsurprised to see that she looks angry. That frown is too familiar. "We didn't - we were careful."

"Course we were," he says soothingly, placing the plate and cup in front of her, and setting about getting himself coffee. "We know what's at stake."

"Exactly! We don't want this." She falls silent too quickly, and the words hang in the air.

"It would be stupid, trying to raise a child in wartime," he says softly, turning his cup over in his hands.

"And we're barely adults ourselves. Merlin's sake, James, we're _nineteen_. Even without a war, it would be…"

"Yeah. It's not...right. We haven't even thought about kids. We only just got married. This - your mum would swat us upside the head for even thinking about it."

"We're not, though. We're not thinking about it. We'll just - I'll make an appointment with the Healer. As soon as possible. We can't lose any time being - being sentimental over this. Dumbledore needs us."

He sits down heavily next to her, coffee in hand, and she rests her head on his shoulder. He puts a hand on her leg, and leans so his head is on hers. "This is war, James. And we're - we're barely keeping ourselves alive -"

His hand clenches down convulsively on her knee, remembering the last mission-gone-wrong, as so many of them are nowadays. His stomach turns at the thought of a tiny baby in a tiny coffin, or a little kid growing up motherless or fatherless or just less, and not for the first time he feels angry, at the fact that even if he and Lily do have a baby eventually, that kid's never going to know - oh, he doesn't know, the Prewett brothers, and Ben Fenwick, and all the other people that maybe he and Lily didn't know very well, but who they could have known, if they'd had the chance. All the people who their kid could have grown up with, who could have peopled the background of his visits to Diagon Alley and his first trip to Hogsmeade and platform 9 ¾, waving goodbye to their own kids as James and Lily waved goodbye to their child.

"It's not fair," he whispers, and he hates himself for saying it, knowing how childlike he sounds and that he should be stronger, for Lily at least. He doesn't look at her, but after a short time he can feel her hand covering his on her knee, her wedding ring digging in slightly into his knuckle, and he just suddenly feels this wave of love for her, his green-eyed girl, infinitely lovely and frustrating and kind, who fits him like a glove and makes him someone he's rather glad to be. She's - well, at first, she wasn't, of course, and if he didn't love her like he does he's fairly sure things would have panned out roughly the same anyway, but she's come to be the whole reason he's fighting this war. If he didn't have his head screwed on firmly, he'd say she was the reason he was alive, but that's not quite true. She just makes his life better. For some inexplicable reason, waking up at 6 AM with her hair tickling his nose makes him feel pretty damn good about facing the world. She's not perfect, and he's not either, but their imperfections balance each other out until as far as James is concerned, Lily is almost an extension of himself, absolutely vital to his being. Almost, but not quite, because one understands their fingers and legs and elbows and things. One knows how they work, one can manipulate them to do exactly as they want. He's never understood Lily like that, but it's a perfect circle in that he loves her because of it, and he knows with as much certainty as - as he knows the sun will rise, or that the grass is green, or that Sirius will never ever stop making that godawful pun about his name, that he'll never stop trying to understand her. He'll never stop looking at her in wonder, as he is now, as he does when she fights, hair a red halo around her as she twists and turns, as he did when they got married not that long ago and she promised him she'd be there forever, as he is now when she's _carrying his child._

And something stirs within him, another certain feeling, that this baby, this tiny little ball of cells that's not anything to be alive yet, is all of his love for his wife embodied. And more than that - it's her love for him as well, because for some reason she thinks that James Potter is the person she wants to spend the rest of her life with, and that love is the most precious thing he has. It's stupid, really - it's not even a baby yet, they can have children later, wartime is no environment for a child to grow up in - but he can feel a tenderness towards his not-baby stir somewhere deep inside him, and he doesn't want to give it up.

He turns his palm over and tries to convey this in one tight squeeze, and he thinks she understands because she squeezes back, just as hard.

"I love you," he says, fiercely. Waits, because in the end this is her decision, more than his. And she nods, and she presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

"I think…" She stops, and bites her lip. "This is- not smart. This could be the worst mistake we've ever made."

"It could be," he agrees.

"But - the war isn't our lives, James. I love you, and that's something different to it. Something bigger. So what if - well, if it weren't for the war, it probably wouldn't be. The biggest mistake, that is. I think it would be an - well, an adventure. And when we got married, not to be sentimental but that was a promise to have all the adventures we could and to have them together, because James, I love you, and this war - this war is _nothing_ to that. So maybe we should just say screw it, you know? And just go ahead with this because God knows whether we'll be able to in the future and maybe there will be a better time but right now we have each other and I don't think we really need anything other than that." She turns to look at him. "What do you think?"

He looks at her for a few seconds, then looks down at where their hands are interlaced on her knee. Gently, he squeezes, and looks back at her. A grin spreads slowly across his face.

"There's no one I'd rather have adventures with, Lily Potter. I reckon this could be the best one we've had yet."

She smiles back. "Well then, James Potter. Better buckle up, because things are about to get interesting." She leans over, and kisses him softly, hand coming up to his cheek. "Same here, you idiot."

She rises, grabbing her empty mug and his and humming something vaguely familiar under her breath as she rinses them in the sink. He turns to watch her go, and notices for the first time the sunlight streaming through the windows. It's going to be a beautiful day, he thinks, and they're going to be alright.

* * *

A/N: Hello all! It's been a while, but laptop shenanigans have set me back somewhat. This fic was written for lady-sybil-branson during Jily Secret Santa, on tumblr - you should check it out, there's a lot of good fic there, and look me up at .com if you want as well!

The title is a bit weird - as you might have guessed, it's from A Christmas Carol, the 'ghosts of' Christmas past, present, and future, and the three parts of this fic _sort of_ symbolise that. There's also a bunch of stuff about the war itself being a ghost that didn't quite make it into the fic, but next time maybe!

I've not had a _huge_ amount of time to work on fic, and also my inspiration for the space pirates fic is dwindling, so I'm sorry for anybody who may have been reading that and waiting for an update but I think it's going to have to go on hiatus for now. I do have a lot of other projects in the works though so watch this space!

Finally, Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year for all of you. I hope 2014 is a good one and that you all continue to be your splendid marvellous selves. Hasta luego!

Sriya xxx


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